Joe Jackson's children Michael, La Toya and Janet said he beat, abused and terrified them, but they still felt love

The death of Joe Jackson Wednesday left many fans feeling torn over the 89-year-old Jackson family patriarch’s legacy.

Would he be remembered as the glue that kept The Jackson 5 together, a dedicated family man who knew the extremes it took to achieve unprecedented success in the music world?

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Or would the long-circulating reports of an abusive Jackson who would stop at nothing to push his children into a life they did not necessarily want overshadow his children’s countless Grammy Awards and Billboard records?

Here are some of the most notable statements by Michael, La Toya, Janet and Jermaine about their father and the impact he had on their lives.

“He’s still a mystery man to me and he may always be one,” the singer wrote in his autobiography. “One of the few things I regret most is never being able to have a real closeness with him. He built a shell around himself over the years and, once he stopped talking about our family business, he found it hard to relate to us… My father did always protect us and that’s no small feat.”

1991: La Toya Jackson, ‘Regis & Kathie Lee’

“There was always that façade up there, smiling in front of the cameras, but when we got home it was totally different, an entirely different lifestyle at home. It was very, very hard. My father was very strict, he beat us. Belts, whips, whatever,” Jackson told the hosts while promoting her book “La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family.” “My brothers were grown and my father would take his fists and punch them and knock them down the steps constantly. To this day, they are still afraid of my father, they will tell you.”

Jackson claimed her father’s cruelty wasn’t limited to physical abuse — he also mentally and sexually abused his children. The family has denied those charges.

“There were times when my mother would say, ‘Please, Joe, not tonight, leave her alone, let her rest, don’t get in the bed with her,’” she said, referring to oldest sister Rebbie, whom she claimed Joe sexually abused. “He did (abuse me) very badly.”

1993: Michael Jackson to Oprah Winfrey

“My father teased me, he’d tell me I’m ugly. I love my father but I don’t know him. Am I angry with him? Sometimes I do get angry, yes. I don’t know him the way I’d like to know him. I just wish I could understand my father,” Jackson told Winfrey. “(He would beat me) because he wanted me to, I don’t know if I was his golden child or whatever it was, some may call it a strict disciplinarian or whatever, but he was very strict, very hard, very stern. And just a look would scare you. Frightened.”

Jackson also told the host that just the sight of his father would be enough to make him throw up, and that while he struggled with his feelings, he still did love Joe.

Jackson bared his soul to Boteach in 2000 and 2001 for a series of extensive recordings which were later released after his death in 2009.

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The “Bad” singer spoke at length about his conflicting feelings toward the man he was forced to call Joseph, revealing that his father once said that if he and his siblings ever stopped singing, Joe would drop them “like a hot potato.”

“(Mother Katherine) was always the one in the background when he would lose his temper — hitting us and beating us. I hear it now. ‘Joe, no, you are going to kill them. No! No, Joe, it’s too much,’ and he would be breaking furniture and it was terrible,” Michael recalled. “He would make you strip nude first. He would oil you down. It would be a whole ritual. So when the foot of the — ironing cord hit you, it just, you know — and it was just like me dying. And he would just whip you all over your face, your back, everywhere… I would just give up, like there was nothing I could do, you know. And I hated him for it.”

The King of Pop said that even all these years later, he was still scared of Joe, despite the fact that time had softened him.

“Time and age has changed him and he sees his grandchildren and he wants to be a better father. It is almost like the ship has sailed its course and it is so hard for me to accept this other guy that is not the guy I was raised with. I just wish he had learned that earlier,” Jackson said.

“I can’t see him as the new man. I am like an angel in front of him, like scared. One day he said to me, ‘Why are you scared of me?’ I couldn’t answer him. I felt like saying, ‘Do you know what you have done? Do you know what you have done to me?’”

Michael Jackson even reflected on the conversations he’d have with sister Janet regarding the day their father would finally kick the bucket.

“I’d say, ‘Janet, shut your eyes… Picture Joseph in a coffin. He’s dead. Do you feel sorry?’ She would go, ‘No.’ That’s just what we would do to each other as kids, we would play games like that,” he said. “And that’s how hateful we were… That’s how angry we were with him. And I love him today, but he was hard.”

Jackson again recalled in vivid detail the grueling dance rehearsals Joe would put him and his brothers through.

“He would tear you up if you missed (a step). And so not only were we practicing, we were nervous rehearsing because he sat in a chair and he had this belt in his hand. And if you didn’t do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you,” he said.

“And I was so fast he couldn’t catch me half the time, but when he would catch me, oh my god, it was bad. It was really bad.”

2009: Jermaine Jackson, Access Hollywood

“He’s probably, second to Michael, (one) of the most misunderstood people. And my father is the reason we’re sitting her right now. And because of all the discipline —i like we didn’t understand it [then]… but now we do, very clearly,” Jermaine said in defense of Joe. “(Michael) being one of the youngest at the time, he didn’t understand… My father is no different from any other father that just wanted things a certain way and it was not abuse.”

“I look at it this way: You’ve got six boys in Gary, Indiana, and so I can say that he got those six boys out of Gary, Indiana, and the rest of the family out of Gary and now our name is internationally known throughout the world,” he said.

"To pull off what he pulled off, how he pulled it off, where he comes from, where his family was born from, I think my father is one of the greatest men that ever lived,” Tito said. “I'm pretty sure that everybody at some time in their life has a few words with their pop, but the difference between the Jackson family and other families is that it gets written about. The relationship we've got with our father is not different at all."

2011: Janet Jackson, CNN

Janet opened up about her strained relationship with Joe, but said he only ever raised his hand to her one time.

“I think my father means well and wants nothing but the best for his kids. I just think the way he went about certain things wasn’t the best way, but, you know, it got the job done,” she said. “And that’s maybe because of how he was raised, doing what he thought was best, not knowing any better.”

She said that they did not speak very often, and that she once tried to call him dad instead of Joseph to no avail.

“I wish our relationship was different but I know that he loves me,” she said. “There’s no question about it… I think he did a wonderful job with us, the outcome, but I think the way he went about it, I don’t know if I agree with that. But we turned out OK.”

"(I was) not so much petrified but — but just the excitement of him not understanding what it — what it means. He wanted to show us, 'I care about you. Even if I have to whip your butt, I care about you,’” Jermaine said. "We wouldn't want to be raised any other way. It's hard raising nine kids, bringing them from Indiana out here ... And if he didn't do anything else, he brought us out, he taught us everything we knew about becoming what we became. He gets a bad rap and he has feelings.”

“I will always love you! You gave us strength, you made us one of the most famous families in the world. I am extremely appreciative of that, I will never forget our moments together and how you told me how much you cared,” Jackson wrote on Twitter following her father’s death.

Jackson also included a link to a scene from her reality series “Life with La Toya,” in which she and Joe enjoyed a campfire together, and he finally agreed to let her call him dad instead of Joseph.